Memory

So this is a sad thing to be my first post here but maybe it will spiral out into something really great in the process of typing it, which is indeed the premise of this site as far as I can gather.

The spark to the fuse of this particular dynamite was checking myspace this morning to realize that I have somehow over night lost two friends. Unable to detect which friends had gotten lost in the night I stumbled upon the fact that I actually had a new friend recently added that very night, which should have left me one up in the game but instead meant that three of my stalwart friends had veered off the trail during the previous nuctum hours.

So this brings up a few things for me, first amongst the things brought up is that I shouldn't have so many 'friends' that I can't remember who is who. While principally I agree with the former statement I would like to interrupt myself to remind myself that mypace's basic function is precisely that, to provide a lifeline for struggling peripheral friendships and another means of communication for solid ones. If then myspace as actually caused me an amnesia of friends, if it has somehow made it less possible to remember who I was even friends with from the start such that I could search for the missing parties, then, then my friends myspace is not doing its job. For shame.

The solution (and here is where I am hoping this spirals outward beyond this banal instantiation) or at least a possible solution is a Wiki-like retention of recent edits. A memory page in which the lost friends appear as edited out ghosts, clinging to life only as digital memories whose opacity is about to be lost forever.

One lesson the Luddite would be inclined to take from this would simply be that our digital world is ethereal and if you really care to remember such things one must either apply one's own mind of use a more stable and time tested tool such as pen and paper. (Funny enough, Luddites were originally people who reacted against the technology of the printing press, as if paper itself was already too high tech -- tangentially (sorry I know we are already in a parenthetical) it is also worth noting that they were already attempting to start the struggle, even if unconsciously, to stop the off loading of memory onto technologies, the struggle that is really peaking right now with the access to the internet and externalized sources of memory but really begins with anything not based on self reliance).

So what have we learned through my ramblings today? Basically you have two routes to take. The first: Do it ourself. Train your memory to be better and limit interactions of importance to what will work with your memories capacity. A good way to practice is memorizing poetry and training the recitation part of your brain. The second and more likely (tho' let's see some blending of these two not-necessarily-divergent schemes): Is to adapt current technologies to to the specifically human uses we desire of them. Wiki is a great version of this as are Office suite technologies in general. One last note would be the non-Lud argument that indeed tech is precisely for the purpose of off-loading these types of memory that we find superfluous. If indeed you were required to memorize everyone you know's phone number your head would be full of an inane and arbitrary set of information that doesn't do anything but prove something about your capacity to remember which is arguably not the main function of the human mind that would be better put to imagining or thinking rationally.

So there you have it. My first long and winding post. I think this spiraled nicely.